


Pacifica

by LadyKes



Category: La Femme Nikita, Spooks | MI-5
Genre: Crossover, Gen, Post-Series, Season/Series 08, Season/Series 09
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-12
Updated: 2016-11-05
Packaged: 2018-08-21 23:39:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 5,480
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8264657
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyKes/pseuds/LadyKes
Summary: Eight years after the end of La Femme Nikita, events occur so that she encounters a few other familiar spies.   Some spoilers through the end of Series 9 of Spooks/MI-5, and full spoilers through the end of Series 5 of LFN.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is an experiment. My brain is a crossover factory, so I couldn't help but wonder what would happen if Nikita and the characters from LFN happened to encounter the characters from Spooks.

Mornings were predictable. Get up, get dressed, have a cup of coffee, go to the perch, read the daily summary of whatever havoc various parties were creating in the world, have some fresh fruit and more coffee, and then deal with the havoc. It hadn’t changed in years. She’d changed. Eight years as Operations would change anyone. She’d come to understand more of what had driven Paul, even what had driven Madeleine. She still missed Madeleine, in a way. No one had had better insight into what had driven people. No one had been able to interrogate anyone better.

Today the coffee was Ethiopian and prepared exactly the way she liked it. Of course it was. They were well-trained in Section, right down to the kitchen staff, and giving Operations a bad cup of coffee was considered extremely bad form. It might even be considered a reason for cancellation, depending on who you asked. The fruit on the tray was fresh dragon fruit. They must have had a -- good conversation -- with their supplier again. She hadn’t had dragon fruit in months. She took the cup of coffee and the fruit to the chair she’d installed in the perch. Paul had tended to stand and loom, and she admitted she did some looming of her own, but when she was reading the morning summary, she preferred to sit. Everything seemed normal until she got to the last item on the tablet. She pushed a stud on the arm of the chair.

“Quinn,” the voice said.

“Do we have confirmation on the Nightingale situation?” Nikita asked, and there was a pause while Quinn checked her data.

“Yes, one hundred percent,” Quinn replied.

“Briefing in an hour. Teams A and B,” Nikita said, and cut the connection. It had felt rude for the first few months, but she was used to it now. No one had time for pleasantries, especially if Nightingale really had blown up like it seemed to have done. That was possibly a poor choice of words, and she huffed a silent laugh at herself. She had an hour to finish her dragon fruit and prepare to brief the team on what Nightingale had done now. 

 

She still expected to see Michael around the table, even after all these years. He was never there, of course. He was caring for Adam and by all accounts was doing well. Of course she had surveillance on him, and of course he knew she had surveillance on him. He’d started sending back the ones who did badly. Generally they came back with only bruises and could be retrained. The ones who came back with broken bones or worse were cancelled. 

Walter was still there. Walter would probably never retire and would certainly never learn that he should stop calling Operations “Sugar”, although at least she’d trained him not to do it in front of impressionable young recruits. Part of being Operations was the mystique and there wasn’t much mystique in someone nicknamed “Sugar”. 

Once everyone had settled into their chairs, Nikita began speaking.

“Project Nightingale was developed several years ago,” she started. “The goal was to gradually remove various threats and destabilize various countries in order to establish a new world order that was more palatable to Center’s objectives.”

She pushed a button and a short video clip of the explosion of the hotel in London appeared.

“Yesterday, a bomb was detonated in this hotel while it hosted a delegation discussing the Indian submarine our contacts in Pakistan recently captured for us.” The summit was, in truth, a bit of theatre and a chance to determine who was still loyal to Nightingale and who was moving on their own. They’d begun to suspect some months ago that there were parties in Nightingale that no longer felt loyal to the cause, or at least to the paycheck. 

“We had intended for the summit to go forward and for all parties to publicly come to an agreement to avert nuclear war with the endgame of a non-nuclear conflict to remove twenty targets. We had until yesterday believed that this endgame was not known to anyone in Nightingale.”

The screen flipped to reveal the names and pictures of the twenty targets, some of whom were greyed out, indicating that they’d already been dealt with. 

“Unfortunately, several persons within Nightingale had been compromised and made the choice to move forward on their own towards a nuclear conflict. Most of those persons have now been removed.” She said it without passion, but everyone around the table knew its meaning. Either they’d died in the explosion or Center had made them wish they had. Not even Center wanted a nuclear war. It destabilized too much.

“We’re not sure who is still loyal to Nightingale and who is now part of the splinter group,” Quinn added. “And we have another problem: MI-5 has discovered Nightingale’s existence.”

One of the younger agents scoffed, “MI-5? Couldn’t find their arse with two hands. No way they got wind of it.”

That was the wrong thing to say in the middle of a mission briefing and Nikita stared him down until he shrank into his chair. She made a note on her tablet to have him re-trained and saw with satisfaction that he turned pale when she made the note. 

Nikita pushed a button to show an older man and the name Nicholas Blake next to it. 

“MI-5 wouldn’t have known about it,” she conceded, “except that this man, former Home Secretary Nicholas Blake, was a member of Nightingale and decided to tell them about it for reasons of his own. We suspect he began to have doubts about Nightingale.”

“What’s the status of Blake?” one of the operatives asked.

“Alive and living in Scotland. We’re watching him carefully,” Quinn answered for her. 

“Our more immediate problem is MI-5. Nightingale is a blown op - we can’t know who is loyal and who has splintered,” Nikita said crisply. “We’ve already started mopping up and removing our agents and targets, but we’ll need to convince MI-5 to stop looking into it.”

“So we kill them,” Ramsey suggested, and Walter rolled his eyes, which made Nikita stifle a smile. Some of the new recruits were a little too happy to pull the trigger without any thought of the consequences. Ramsey was unlikely to make it to Level Two. 

“We can’t kill everyone in that section,” Walter said in an overly patient voice. “For one thing, it’s run by Sir Harry Pearce.”

Everyone nodded at that name. Sir Harry was one of the better spooks the UK had and Section very much liked him exactly where he was. He got the job done and he didn’t mind working between the legal lines if needed. Nikita had been tempted to send him flowers when he’d taken care of Kachimov. Sarkisian was much more easily manipulated, but unfortunately that had meant he’d been manipulated into his own demise. Gulyanov was so far a non-entity, which was fine with Section.

“So what’s the plan, then?” Walter said impatiently. He’d always hated long briefings. “And what are you gonna need me to prep?”

“The primary objective is to convince MI-5 to stop looking into Nightingale,” Nikita said. “Team A, eighteen hour clock. Team B, thirty six. We’re on lockdown until then.”

The teams grabbed their tablets and left the table except for Walter, who was looking at his tablet.

“Am I reading this inventory right, Sugar?” he questioned Nikita, and this time Nikita let the endearment pass. “You’re going out?”

“Yes,” Nikita said, in a voice that didn’t allow argument. 

“As it turns out,” Quinn smirked, “one of MI-5’s agents may have a thing for blondes.”

“Don’t we all?” Walter muttered, which Nikita ignored.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nikita makes contact with MI-5.

John Bateman alias Lucas North might not have a thing for blondes, but there was a decent chance he did. His most recent relationship had been with a Nightingale asset from the CIA and there was more than a little speculation among Section’s analysts about whether there had been something between him and Rosalind Myers before her recent demise during the explosion. Nikita didn’t think so, but she wasn’t afraid to play on a man’s preferences if needed. And yes, of course there were plenty of blondes in Section, but something about North intrigued her. She saw potential in him, and she was always looking for that.

Today he was running in a park near his flat in long sleeves and long pants. Given the heat of the day, it was a little unusual to run in that attire, but she knew from his file that he had Russian prison tattoos he wanted to cover. Eight years he’d spent there before MI-5 had bothered to get him back and she mentally shook her head. Section would probably have just had him killed the first year. It would have been more merciful. On the other hand, they’d learned from those years that Oleg Darshavin was very good at what he did, which was why he was now working as an interrogator for Section Two. It hadn’t been hard to transfer him from FSB custody to Section Two’s care. He’d been offered to Section One first, of course, but Nikita was happy with the team she had now. 

“All teams in position,” Nikita stated as she stretched and put her “earbuds” in, then waited for the confirmations to come back to her. “Moving to point alpha.”

She started jogging, carefully moving just fast enough to show that she was a regular exerciser but not quickly enough to make anyone pay too much attention. She was dressed in her regular workout clothes, which showed her figure nicely and she knew she was drawing a few eyes, including North’s. Over the next few minutes, she gradually shifted so her pace and his were similar. Finally, when his shoulders had relaxed back into a posture that indicated he didn’t think she was following him, she made her move.

She stumbled over a rock and fell, landing on the heels of her hands. It stung, of course, and she carefully shifted to sit in the middle of the path for a moment. North was behind her now and he pulled up and crouched down.

“Are you alright?” he asked, looking politely solicitous. 

“Yeah, she’ll be right,” she said with the frustration of someone who’d done something dumb. His eyebrow twitched at her Australian accent, which was thicker than it actually generally was. The phrasing made her sound like a bogan too, but it might throw him off-balance for a moment to hear that from someone in the middle of London. 

“Gimme a hand up?” she asked, smiling up at him, and he put a hand under her elbow to help her stand. As soon as she did, she hissed in apparent pain. She could see her team drifting closer in case he tried something. They didn’t want any collateral here, but if he did anything that even looked like taking out Operations, it wouldn’t end well. 

“Maybe you should go to A&E,” he suggested, but she shook her head with stoicism. 

“Just need to sit for a second,” she insisted, and started limping her way to a bench, which was conveniently near. He followed at a safe hovering distance, but didn’t sit next to her on the bench. She needed him to be closer to pass the message along without anyone else hearing it.

She glanced up from massaging her ankle and smiled tightly, friendly but in pain. 

“Thanks. You can sit,” she invited him, but he didn’t. The man was dangerous, capable of bombing embassies and murdering friends even before he’d joined MI-5, although as far as Section was aware, MI-5 knew none of that. North might not even know it, given how far he’d buried Bateman into his subconscious. The psychological profile on him had run to five pages. Madeline would have written ten. 

“су́кин сын,” she muttered, moving her ankle apparently painfully, and his head tilted.

“Вы говорите по-русски?” he asked.

“Mostly swear words,” she said, looking up at him with a slightly naughty smile, and one corner of his mouth tilted up. 

“Best part of any language,” he agreed, and she chuckled.

“What’s your favorite?” she asked, and then he did sit down next to her. “In any language?”

He considered that and said, “肏你祖宗十八代. It means, roughly, damn your ancestors to the eighteenth generation.”

“Good one,” she agreed, as if she hadn’t just been supplied with the translation by Quinn, who sounded like she was trying not to laugh. 

“Yours?” he asked, and she waited while Quinn supplied a good one, which fortunately looked a lot like thinking about her favorite.

“Go n-ithe an cat thú, is go n-ithe an diabhal an cat. May the cat eat you and the devil eat the cat,” she said, and he chuckled. She had a feeling she could exchange curses with North for quite some time, but that wasn’t the reason she was here. The team was in final position now, ready to take him out if he reacted badly to her statement.

“Pacifica,” she said quietly, and watched his face change almost imperceptibly.

“Sorry, what?” he said, but he hadn’t misheard. They both knew he hadn’t.

“I’ll expect contact in twenty-four hours or less,” she said, continuing to move her ankle.

He stared at her, committing her face to memory, much good may it do him. Then he got up and left, starting to run as he had before. He might or might not know what Pacifica meant, but he knew it to be something he had to pass along to his boss.

“Team A, maintain surveillance,” she instructed, and they all shifted to follow North. If he went anywhere other than Thames House with this information, they’d know about it. And then they’d deal with it. For herself, she had to pretend to limp out of the park and back to the van without any good Samaritan trying to take her to A&E. Quinn would cover the CCTV so it looked like she’d gotten into the same car she’d apparently gotten out of when she arrived at the park.

Lucas jogged for a few more minutes, noting here and there that there might be agents of someone, probably the blonde, watching him. Eventually he finished his workout and pulled his mobile out of his pocket, then hit a button to dial Harry.

“Lucas,” Harry said dryly. “It’s your day off.”

“I know,” Lucas replied. “Had an interesting run, though. I’m coming in.”

“Alright,” Harry replied, and rang off.

He didn’t go straight to Thames House, of course. First he went home and showered and changed into something other than workout gear. Partially he did it because he was a smelly mess after a workout and partially he did it because he didn’t like the way the gorgeous blonde had spoken so peremptorily. Eventually, though, he arrived at headquarters and went to Harry’s office.

“What’s this about, Lucas?” Harry asked.

“I was jogging in the usual place when I was approached,” Lucas started. “Didn’t recognize the woman, but she sounded very Australian. Blonde, blue eyes, fit, about 1.75 meters.”

“Could be anyone,” Harry said. “We’ll have you look through the files. What did she say?”

“Pacifica,” Lucas repeated, and watched Harry’s face. The man had the perfect stone face. He’d lied to Lucas multiple times and looked like he was discussing the weather. This wasn’t any different. “She said she’d expect contact in twenty-four hours or less.”

That did make Harry react, just a micro-expression, but it was enough. Harry knew the name, Harry didn’t like the name, and Harry really didn’t like the deadline. 

“I need you to make a drop,” he said, and Lucas nodded. Harry proceeded to give him the details of the drop, which were as normal and mundane as a drop could be, and Lucas went to make it, then went back to The Grid to look through their files. He didn’t find anyone resembling the blonde in any of their files. He had Tariq look through CCTV, but all they found was that the blonde had limped out of the park and gotten into a late model mid-range Toyota. From there, she’d vanished off the CCTV in Brixton. Whoever she was, she didn’t want to be found and seemed to be good enough to keep MI-5 from finding her. He had Tariq keep working on it, though.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harry and Lucas meet the mysterious blonde.

Eighteen hours later, Lucas and Harry were in a carpark waiting. Harry had been silent on the drive over, which his agent had respected. Lucas knew Harry only spoke when he wanted to speak.

“What are we walking into, Harry?” Lucas asked, finally, and Harry sighed. Lucas was always a little more willing to challenge him than some of the other agents. It was one of the things that made him so good at what he did. “I looked it up. There’s no record of a project Pacifica in any of the files I can access. Or any of the files I can’t access, for that matter. So what is it?”

“Pacifica isn’t a project,” Harry explained a little reluctantly. “It’s a protocol, and it’s only been invoked five times that I’m aware of. The last time was in the mid 1990s. It calls for the head of MI-5 to meet a contact at a certain place at a certain time. The head is to bring no backup and only one trusted agent. Your drop was our confirmation that we intended to comply.”

They had a team on the rooftops, which meant they were violating the protocol rather than complying fully, but Harry wasn’t inclined to trust anything related to Pacifica, no matter how correct the information had been the last four times. It had been valuable, needed information that had, in one case, avoided the annihilation of an entire people-group, but it was one of the most shadowy of the shadow protocols.

“Has the place been the same since the '90s? London’s changed a bit since then,” Lucas semi-joked and Harry semi-smiled.

“No. The place changes periodically. We can’t find any record of who changes it or what clearance they use, but it changes, and it changes in a way that means whoever is doing this knows London. Malcolm worked on it for months one time and didn’t ever find the source. Tariq will probably do the same now that it’s been activated again,” Harry sighed. 

Lucas’ mobile beeped at the same time Harry’s did, and they both looked at the message. _Go to the park across the street._

Lucas glanced at him and then got out of the car before covering Harry as he did the same. It was time to see what Pacifica had for them now. They walked across the street carefully, and Harry listened as each of their agents checked in with visual. The park was a small one and there was already a blonde woman sitting on a bench. It was the same blonde woman that had been at the park, if Harry wasn’t wrong, and he was a little startled. Either they were dealing with a lackey, which he would not appreciate, or Lucas had been approached by someone much more senior than might be expected.

“Good evening, gentlemen,” the woman greeted them, standing, and Harry could see why Lucas had described her as fit. Fit was an understatement. This woman was gorgeous, with pale blonde hair and icy blue eyes set off perfectly by her long black wool coat and black beret. She reminded him of Ros, and he wondered whether that was intentional. Probably.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you in person, Sir Harry,” she continued, and Harry noted that her accent didn’t seem as thick as Lucas had described. “I’m glad to see that the protocols haven’t been forgotten.”

“This one is hard to forget,” he acknowledged. “I’m afraid I haven’t had the pleasure, Ms…”

“Nikita,” she said, and he saw Lucas blink next to him. Nikita was generally a man’s name, at least in the Cyrillic countries. This was not a man.

“You didn’t follow the protocol exactly, though,” she chided him. “No backup other than your ‘trusted agent’. Very sloppy of you. I’ve had to neutralize your team, which I didn’t really want to do.”

Lucas immediately started checking in on each of their agents again and indeed, they were all non-communicative.

“Killing my agents doesn’t make me inclined to follow protocols,” Harry ground out, and Nikita shook her head.

“No one’s dead. They’re all taking short naps, though. Now, as for why I called this meeting: Nightingale is dead.”

Harry’s mind whirred. Had Pacifica been compromised by Nightingale? They knew the organization reached into every agency and government in the world. Perhaps it reached into MI-5 as well. Perhaps their computer system had been hacked

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said smoothly. 

“Of course you don’t,” Nikita agreed easily. “Nevertheless, it’s dead. MI-5 can turn its attention to other problems. There are plenty for you to deal with, don’t you think?”

“There always are,” Harry agreed, which wasn’t an agreement to leave Nightingale alone.

“I can see that you’re just as suspicious as you should be,” Nikita said pleasantly. “So I’ll tell you this too. Over the next few weeks, you’ll see that several people around the world will all have accidents, discover sudden medical conditions or perhaps just experience a case of lead poisoning. Some of those will be in the UK. When it’s done, all those involved in Nightingale will be dead.”

“Who are you? Are you involved with them?” he demanded. 

“I’m not a part of Nightingale,” she demurred, although for all he knew she was lying through her teeth. “Nuclear war is bad for everyone.”

That was typically British understatement, even if she wasn’t British.

“This is your final warning, Sir Harry,” she said. “Leave Nightingale alone. It will all be mopped up in a month.”

“How do I know you’re not lying?” he demanded further, and she smiled brilliantly.

“You don’t. But I’m not. And just to show my goodwill, I’ll tell you something else. We’re leaving one Nightingale agent for you, just because we know you’d like revenge for Rosalind Myers. And you, Mr. North, would probably like revenge for Sarah Caulfield.”

Harry felt Lucas stiffen almost imperceptibly next to him. Whoever Nikita was with, she had good information. 

“How kind of you,” Harry said dryly, and Nikita actually chuckled.

“It’s not kindness, Sir Harry. It’s closure. I’ll send you the information under the code Delta Oscar Three Kilo Five Five Romeo,” she said easily, and Harry waited while Tariq checked that against the Grid.

“It’s a real code. Nothing in the file,” Tariq’s voice reported in their ears, and Harry glanced up at Nikita. Then Tariq’s voice changed. “No, wait, something’s just appeared. That isn’t even possible. This system is completely secure.”

“Name,” Lucas said to Tariq, and Tariq sounded like he was taking a deep breath.

“Nicholas Blake.” 

Harry rounded on Nikita angrily, “Blake is the one decent politician I’ve ever known. He’s not a part of this.”

“Unfortunately he is, Sir Harry,” Nikita said calmly. “Your analyst will receive all the information shortly. Enjoy your trip to Scotland.”

With that, she turned and walked into the darkness while Lucas and Harry stood and watched after her.

“Tariq, do we have anyone still conscious on the backup team?” Lucas demanded, and Tariq replied in the negative, which made him blow out an angry breath. 

“Alright, we’re coming back in,” Lucas decided, and he and Harry walked back towards the car and got in, then began the trip back to The Grid.

“Do you believe it?” Lucas asked, when Harry hadn’t said anything for several minutes.

“No. I don’t want to,” Harry admitted. “But the information in the Pacifica protocol has always been correct and always been valuable. That’s why it exists. We’ll see what Tariq has to say.”

When they returned to the grid, Tariq looked at them somberly.

“It’s all here,” he said. “All of it. Emails, texts, photographs, records, even a receipt from a coffee shop. Blake was part of Nightingale. Whoever Nikita is with, they know their stuff.”

“I have to talk to Blake,” Harry decided, probably irrationally, but at least he knew it. “I can’t take this at face value. Not with him. Not with her. I’m going to Scotland.”

 

His trip to Scotland went poorly, to say the least, but when he returned he knew that Nikita’s information had been correct. Once he was back on the grid, he logged into his computer and placed a note in the Pacifica file, which was also part of the protocol. Each time Pacifica was invoked, a final note had to be left to indicate that it was complete.

_Thank you. Good luck._

A few minutes later, a note appeared below his.

_Until next time._

Thirty seconds later, the file blanked itself.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An epilogue, of sorts.

It was a bad idea from pretty much every security angle. Walter had been so unhappy about it, he hadn’t said anything at all. Quinn was less quiet about it, but that was the job of a second in command. Quinn might have her eye on Nikita’s job, but she wasn’t interested in having it right now.

Still, Nikita was Operations, and that meant that she could essentially do what she liked as long as it didn’t interfere with Center’s latest pronouncement or any of the Sections’ active operations. At the moment, doing what she liked meant going to London and sitting down in the pub she knew to be Lucas North’s local. 

It’d been a few days since she’d met the MI-5 agents in the park and she knew Sir Harry had already disposed of Nicholas Blake. Quite nice of him to do that for Section, too. The rest of the twenty threats were being dealt with, although not all at once. That was far too obvious.

She settled onto a bar stool and ordered a pint of the local lager, then contemplated the menu. It was limited to things that could be fried, but then that was a pub for you. The fish and chips looked good, from what she saw on another patron’s plate, and she ordered some for herself. It had just arrived when North sat down on the stool next to her and she glanced up with a friendly smile. He was much less friendly-looking, not that it stopped her.

“Chip?” she offered, and his stone face almost showed confusion. “No? More for me. They’re not bad.”

He was still looking at her like he expected her to pull out a gun and push it to his temple or something and she raised an eyebrow. 

“Can I buy you a pint then?” He still didn’t react and she shrugged and went back to her chips.

“What are you doing here?” he asked in a low voice, and she glanced up.

“Having a drink and a plate of fish and chips. What’s it look like?” she said innocently, almost as innocently as she’d sounded when she was informing one of her first terrorists that she liked Froot Loops. Thinking about Bauer brought back memories of Michael and she popped another chip into her mouth to cover it.

They were surrounded by happy, laughing, semi-drunk people, and one of them made the mistake of putting a hand on Nikita’s bum on her stool. She put an elbow backwards without looking, which she almost certainly would have done even without being slightly irritated by memories, and the man doubled over a little. That made Mr. North almost smile, though not quite.

“Why are you here?” he asked, changing the question slightly. 

“Would you believe me if I said it was for the chips?” she asked lightly, and he almost smiled.

“No,” he said baldly, and she shrugged.

“Didn’t think so. Especially since I’m not. But I’m not here to hurt you either, so you can stop dialling,” she said easily, since his hand in his pocket looked a lot like he was trying to dial a number on his mobile. It stopped moving like that as soon as she mentioned it, too.

“So why are you here?” he said again, and his tone had gotten a little more insistent, although still not enough to raise any suspicion for anyone around them.

“Why don’t we go for a walk?” she suggested instead, and his eyes narrowed in a micro-expression of suspicion. She rolled her eyes.

“I already said I’m not here to hurt you. Maybe I want to be friends,” she suggested.

“Do you have friends?” he asked, which was a better question than he knew. 

“Loads, and they’re not all imaginary either,” she replied flippantly. He almost smiled again and she took that for acquiescence, standing up and popping one last chip into her mouth.

The air outside the pub was cold but not unbearably so and she turned the collar up on her black wool coat against the wind. Lucas did the same and she caught a few admiring glances being turned towards the both of them as they walked.

“Why are you here?” he asked a third time. “Do you have a message for Harry?”

“No,” she said breezily. “That’s taken care of, partially thanks to him. Should have known, though. No such thing as an honest politician.”

“Then what?” North demanded, instead of taking her bait about the politician.

“I like you,” she said easily. “You work hard, you’re loyal to your boss, and you’re a good spy.”

“Not good enough to find anything out about you,” he pointed out. “You’re a ghost, Nikita, if that’s even your name. I’d bet I won’t even find any CCTV of this street if I look tomorrow.” 

He wouldn’t. Quinn was making sure of it, helpfully aided by Nikita’s GPS coordinates. 

“Probably not,” she said neutrally. “So why don’t we talk about more pleasant things. You follow football, rugby, or cricket?”

He hadn’t expected that particular subject change, but he went with it anyway. They walked on, discussing sport, entertainment, and even a brief foray into Eurovision. He had an interesting perspective on the Eastern European entries that made her wonder whether she ought to bet on Russia the next time Walter ran a pool. When she’d heard enough to decide that yes, her first hunch about Lucas North had been correct, she gradually wound down the conversation until they stopped in front of a tube station.

“This is my stop,” she said regretfully, and even meant it in a way. Lucas was attractive, intelligent, and had the ability to make a woman feel like she was the only one in the world. It was a nice combination even without his ability to kill without compunction and his fluency in various useful languages. The personality complexities were a concern, but she’d lay odds they would make Psych’s day and then not be a problem at all.

“Right,” he agreed, and she knew he was already planning how he could use the tube network’s various cameras and tracking systems to find her.

“Don’t look, Lucas,” she said softly. “It’s not worth your time. I’m a ghost, and ghosts only disappear when you get closer to them.”

That was a little more personal and profound than he was probably expecting, but he nodded anyway and she reached up to kiss his cheek as if they were ending a date.

“Good night,” she said, smiling nicely at him, and he smiled back equally nicely. 

“Goodbye, don’t you mean?” he said, and she shrugged. 

“I never say goodbye. Bad luck,” she opined, and went down the stairs without a backward glance. Behind her, she could hear Lucas calling Tariq to start tracing her, much good it would do him. 

“Quinn,” she said quietly, and her agent acknowledged it.

“Put Lucas North in the potentials file and add a monitor to him.”

“Already done,” Quinn said smugly, and Nikita smiled even though Quinn couldn’t see it.

\------

Some time later, John Bateman woke up in a round, white room. He was restrained by the wrists and ankles and felt like a tonne of bricks had fallen on his head. That was what happened when one jumped off a building, he supposed. How he’d survived that was something he didn’t understand, but clearly he had. Either that or the afterlife was much more disappointing than even he might have imagined. 

As his vision and mind gradually cleared, he saw the woman he knew as Nikita standing in front of him, wearing a severe black suit and looking about as approachable as a morningstar.

“Mr. Bateman,” she said coolly. “Welcome to Section One.”


End file.
